Like a sulky, overextended student, I have been escaping the duties and responsibilities of my position and running to my poison of choice this week. In the middle of the afternoon, no less. Worse than that, I have even had my two young children join me in my escape. Turn me over to the authorities.
Or don't. My chosen mode of running away, it so happens, is the world of British Sitcoms. The mother of all such sitcoms for my family is, and has been for many years, As Time Goes By, starring Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer. We've seen most of the episodes multiple times and keep our eyes out for the ones we've never come across.
The first episode I ever watched seemed deadly dull. Ordinary things happening to ordinary people, and this was supposed to be funny? But for some reason I kept watching anyway. I soon realized that the show had a way of elevating the mundane to the level of light, uplifting comedy. Everyday foibles that we humans tend to exhibit become the stuff of gentle, though loving, mockery. We are delighted to see perfectly respectable adults behaving in ways that we, and people we know, sometimes behave, and the best part is that on the show, at least, they are always caught doing it. They always learn a lesson . . . if only for that episode.
The Hardcastles—the couple portrayed by Dench and Palmer—are like good neighbors, people you'd like to know and have coffee with. When we're not laughing at the silly misunderstandings in which they often find themselves, we find ourselves agreeing with the sometimes serious and sage advice that comes through their interactions. They make us feel safe and that at least things are right in some corners of the world. There is a settled stability to the characters and their everyday comings and goings that reflects the everyday, ordinary life of most of us, which, to those of us not reading about ourselves on a supermarket tabloid, is a most reassuring thing.
Never mind that the show ended in 2002 with a reunion special in 2005. Some things are simply timeless, the predictability of human interaction being one of them.
Indeed, the steady, mature pace of the show and of the lives of the Hardcastles allows us to slow the frenetic pace of modern life for 20 or so minutes, turn off the news and the noise of the outside world and just breathe. In the range of possible methods of escapism, I think it's a pretty healthy one. And if my children choose to join me in this escape, I have no problem with it.
